


Safe Words

by zoicite



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Flashbacks, Flirting, Mid-Canon, Pining, Story within a Story, fictitious Harrow/Camilla, post-pool scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25470301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoicite/pseuds/zoicite
Summary: Gideon and Harrow in the evening hours after the pool, unwilling to let each other out of their sight, talking about bullshit, about nothing at all, about flirting and handcuffs
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 26
Kudos: 328





	1. the rise and fall

**Author's Note:**

> __
> 
> _“For the rest of that evening they were furtive and unwilling to let the other out of their sight for more than a minute, as though distance would compromise everything all over again--talking to each other as though they’d never had the opportunity to talk, but talking about bullshit, about nothing at all, just hearing the rise and fall of the other one’s voice.”_  
>  \- Gideon the Ninth, Chapter 31

Gideon stood outside the door to the bathroom, damp back pressed against the damp wall. Harrow had wedged a shoe between the bathroom autodoor and its siding to keep it from closing all the way. Gideon half-listened to Harrow while she watched the door attempt to close. It pushed against the shoe, shook and hummed in protest, and then slid open again. Harrow was talking about the trials she’d attempted without her cavalier in those early days while Gideon wandered Canaan House, those first moments of discovery. 

Gideon licked her lips, remnants of salt and paint sharp on her tongue. She felt parched and a little light-headed. The light-headedness, the tickle in her stomach--that was the salt and the fact that she’d skipped dinner. It had nothing to do with the fact that her mouth tasted like the kiss she’d pressed to Harrow’s forehead, tasted like the memory of a confessional necromancer’s paint-streaked skin.

Inside the bathroom Harrow was speaking--“I don’t know how you didn’t see it.”--and Gideon reminded herself to pay attention, that it was absolutely not the time to get lost beneath a pile of salt and the Ninth’s bone chips, or in the memory of how Harrow’s hand trembled as it held her own.

“All of the signs were there,” Harrow continued, her voice echoing slightly off the stone walls of the large bathroom. “And the first thing she chose to do was to point a sword at my cavalier’s neck. And there you were _flirting_.”

“What?” Gideon asked, pulled back to the present by the hilarious level of distaste in the way that Harrow emphasized the word _flirting_. “With you?” 

It was only after she said this that Gideon registered the prior sentence and realized that Harrow definitely wasn’t talking about herself. She was having a hard time following Harrow’s words, but until that moment she didn’t think it mattered. What mattered was that Harrow was _talking_ to her, what mattered was that their entire relationship had shifted in that pool, and if one of them didn’t keep dismantling those walls, they might reconstruct themselves during the night. So for now Harrow talked, and Gideon half-listened as she waited for her turn with the sonic, her turn to get out of her salt-stiff clothes. 

“Not with me, you nincompoop,” Harrow said, as the autodoor tried to slide shut one more time. The insult lacked her usual level of disdain. Gideon was probably imagining it, but it actually sounded laced with just the slightest bit of affection. “Protesilaus.”

At that Gideon turned her head toward the sound of Harrow’s voice. When the autodoor ceded its battle with the shoe and slid back open, Gideon caught a glimpse of bare arms, pale and bone thin. She was immediately transported back to the pool, to Harrow’s hand trembling in hers, and Gideon’s right knee threatened to buckle as something new broke inside her--she hadn’t realized there was anything left. She looked away, cleared her throat. 

Harrow emerged from the bathroom. Her arms were covered by the sleeves of a fresh shirt. Her face was unpainted. Her cheeks were flushed, just a bit, and Gideon couldn’t help herself, she stared. She hadn’t realized a necromancer could look that alive. Harrow fidgeted beneath Gideon’s gaze and then she smiled, a small smile but a real one, and Gideon’s heart completely betrayed her; it skipped an entire beat. She pounded a fist against her chest, turned away and tried to cover the moment with a cough.

“Are you all right?” Harrow asked.

Gideon waved a hand in front of herself, a response that even she did not understand, and then said, “I am absolutely one thousand percent certain that I never once flirted with Protesilaus the Seventh.”

“Of course you didn’t flirt with Protesilaus,” Harrow agreed, cheeks still pink, lips still turned up at the corners, looking as unHarrow-like as Gideon had ever seen her. “Protesilaus was the puppet. Septimus pulled the strings. As you were _flirting_ with her, she pointed her sword at the back of your neck.”

“Oh,” Gideon said. She forced out another cough, then she ducked her head, shrugged in concession. “Okay, you’re right. I was _flirting._ ” She did her very best to mimic the way Harrow kept saying the word.

Harrow paused at that and the color in her cheeks faded. “I do sound jealous, don’t I?”

“Only every second since we arrived,” Gideon confirmed, remembered their fight in the corridor when Gideon first told her as much, and instantly regretted stating the truth.

To Gideon’s surprise, Harrow didn’t bristle at that response. She didn’t come back at Gideon with barbs, with hands splayed. Instead she thought about it for a moment, and eventually she shrugged, a single rise and fall of her shoulders.

“Well, I couldn’t have known,” Harrow admitted. She nodded toward the bathroom. “Your turn.”

Only then did Gideon remember that she looked a mess, paint smeared across her face, hair sticky and stiff, clothes stinking of salt and a new sort of post-pool mildew that her nose hadn’t become accustomed to yet.

Gideon pushed herself off the wall, which had the desired effect of getting her away from said wall, but also came with an unanticipated bonus. In pushing herself away she propelled herself right toward Harrow. She stopped short just before they collided, careful not to touch Harrow with her briny fingers. Harrow, for her part, held her ground, did not flinch or step out of the way. She also didn’t look annoyed by Gideon’s sudden surging movement. That was new too.

Gideon slipped by Harrow and into the bathroom, past the battle-weary autodoor. Once inside, she huddled in the corner near the sonic and the mini pool as she made quick work of her damp clothes. She threw them into the empty pool, on top of Harrow’s discarded clothing. She was acutely aware that Harrow was standing right outside, that Harrow might catch a glimpse of arm or leg or--

They’d both stopped talking. Gideon rushed to fill the silence. 

“Did you know Naberius the Third uses a trident knife as his offhand?” she asked.

“I did not,” Harrow said, from outside of the bathroom. She sounded relieved that Gideon had spoken, even though the things Gideon had chosen to speak about--weapons and the Third--could hardly be of interest to Harrow. “At least I didn’t until I happened upon you punching him in the gut. He waved that thing around quite a lot as he fell.”

Right, Gideon had forgotten about that. She noted now that Harrow still sounded unexpectedly _something_ about the incident.

”Trident knife does seem very on-brand for the Third,” Harrow added.

Gideon smeared cold cream on her face and began wiping away the remnants of paint. 

“Knuckle knives are useless in a duel, you know,” she pointed out. “‘To the first touch’ is baby bullshit.” She’d never been more thankful to Aiglamene for apparently making up her own rules when training Gideon.

“The Ninth has not cared about House rankings since the days of Nonius,” Harrow countered. “I didn’t bring you to the First with me to win sparring matches set to tournament rules.”

“Thank God for that,” Gideon agreed, though if Matthias Nonius earned his renown by making it his life’s mission to own the Third House in tournament, then well, Gideon understood him a little better now. Tern’s hair alone was an excellent motivator for kicking ass with a single touch.  
Gideon stepped into the sonic and turned it on. 

Outside the bathroom Harrow continued. “I brought you to--well…”

She trailed off after that, probably realized they’d already covered that in the pool and had made it a point to move on to lighter things. Gideon’s mind was racing, rushing to decide where to take the conversation next. Should she talk about food, maybe?

No, if she talked about food she’d inevitably end up on the subject of dessert. 

Gideon replayed the last however many hours since she’d found the head of the Seventh cavalier in Harrow’s wardrobe. Harrow’s face, open and honest--the first time Gideon had ever really seen _Harrow_ underneath her many layers of masks--Harrow’s bony waterlogged body pressed tight against hers, the way she shook when Gideon-- 

On the other side of the protesting autodoor, Harrow was still quiet, and Gideon knew she had to be quick, had to come up with some stupid thing--anything--to keep them talking, to keep this safe. A few weeks ago, Gideon would have had plenty to talk about. She could have told Harrow everything she’d overheard since they arrived at Canaan House, all those tidbits she’d picked up by silently listening, by lurking. This would have been so much easier before everything turned to shit. Except for the fact that they never would have been in this position without the crud that came before it.

Her stomach growled and she came back around to the subject of food. She’d been stealing a lot of bread from the kitchens. She must have a hunk squirreled away in these rooms somewhere.

“Are you hungry?” she asked Harrow. It was a stupid question. Whatever it was that controlled the creation of a necromancer forgot to program the hypothalamus to remember to feed the body in addition to the mind. The fact that Gideon knew the word _hypothalamus_ was a testament to the fact they’d been on the First far too long. “We should eat. I think I have bread in the pocket of one of my robes.”

“I’m not eating bread out of your pocket,” Harrow said, immediately. Gideon froze at her tone, at the return to the old pre-pool Harrow, but she relaxed again quickly when Harrow continued. “I have an apple and half a loaf in the drawer.” Her voice retreated as she said this, so Gideon assumed she was retrieving this food from her drawer stash. Her stomach growled again and she decided she was not above eating dinner out of Harrow’s drawers. The alternative--leaving their quarters--was somehow less savory.

Gideon threw on dry clothes and then stepped out of the bathroom. She kicked the shoe aside as she went and the autodoor sighed with relief and slid shut. 

Harrow was back from the bedroom. She stood beside the long, low table at the center of the room. The hunk of bread was displayed prominently on the table. Harrow held the apple in one hand, a knife in the other. She looked like she had no idea what to do with either.

“Are you all right?” Gideon asked. “You look… funny.” She said this in the absolute nicest way possible. She reached out a hand for the knife. 

“I was actually thinking about a joke that Magnus the Fifth told me the second night here,” Harrow said. She pushed the knife and the apple into Gideon’s hand and picked up the bread instead. “He said the only reason he was named cavalier primary was because Lady Abigail Pent was his wife. He said, you could say he--”

“Primarried,” Gideon supplied, and instantly regretted not letting Harrow finish her recap. Gideon cut the apple in two and passed one half back to Harrow. 

Harrow did not seem to mind her interruption. “Oh, you heard it too? It’s a terrible joke, I knew you’d like it. I filed it away to tell you and then…” She waved the hand holding the bread. 

Gideon’s brain stopped at “I knew you’d like it.” and “I filed it away to tell you.” She wasn’t sure how to kickstart it back into gear, so she shoved her half of the apple into her mouth, held it in her teeth, and reached for the bread. Harrow relinquished it without a fight, watched while Gideon tore it into two pieces. 

“I’ll take that one,” Harrow said, pointing to the smaller half. Well, yeah, obviously.

Food divvied and brain still shorted out at the thought of Harrow cataloging bad jokes that she knew Gideon might like, Gideon followed Harrow around their quarters--a cavalier on autopilot--and when Harrow settled on one end of a rotting old sofa, Gideon collapsed onto the other side. After a moment Harrow shifted, folded her legs up onto the sofa, her back pressed against the arm. She stayed neatly in the square of her cushion. Gideon decided that meant she could lay claim to the center of the sofa and she brought her legs up as well.

Harrow nibbled at her apple in silence. It was already turning a little brown at the center. 

Gideon watched the pinched movement of Harrow’s mouth as she chewed. Harrow’s left foot shifted, stretched a little, until her bare toes rested against Gideon’s calf. Gideon thought she might pass out. She shoved more bread into her mouth. 

Her mind caught on that moment at the edge of the pool, Harrow’s hand curled into her own. She’d leaned in, intent on kissing Harrow, and she’d regained her senses only at the very last moment, held back, changed course. She was thinking about kissing Harrow again now, of Harrow’s pale paintless lips pressed to her own. It was stupid. It was silly. There are _so_ many people in this house that she could think about kissing instead. Dulcinea, _Coronabeth_. Why Harrow, of all people? Of all people, how had Harrow ended up _hers_?

“She’s mine,” Gideon told Palamedes just that morning. “Whatever happens, she’s mine.” 

She’d meant that in a completely different way then, hadn’t she? Had she?

“What are you thinking, Nav?” Harrow asked, so suddenly that bread caught in Gideon’s throat and she had to cough hard to dislodge it. She was a big buff bundle of raging hormones and Harrow had looked at her at the edge of the pool like--like her heart might stop if Gideon pressed just right, like one more hug might end her then and there, might tie Gideon to the Tomb forever in the Reverend Daughter’s place. Hold back, Nav. Change course. 

Gideon mentally flailed as she tried to find something safe to say, something new, something that would satisfy Harrow’s query. She reached in six different directions and then asked the first bullshit question she could grab: “How did the Sixth get you in those handcuffs?”

Harrow was quiet for a long moment. She pulled a strip of yellow skin off the apple and then she sniffed and said, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Yes,” Gideon agreed. She latched on, felt much safer here. “That’s why I asked. I’m actually dying to know. My imagination is in overdrive and I’ll never be able to fall asleep tonight.” 

When _was_ the last time they’d slept? 

“It was hardly that exciting,” Harrow said, responding to the first question, the safe question. 

“It’s exciting in my head,” Gideon countered.

“Exciting how?” Harrow asked, suddenly suspicious, but as she said it, she settled deeper into the dusty old sofa, her feet still pressed up against Gideon’s calf. They had never been like this before. They’d never been _comfortable_ with each other. It was so fucking weird; honestly a little scary. 

A new-to-Gideon expression passed over Harrow’s pale pointy face. She looked like she’d tasted something sour and was surprised to find she liked it. 

“You’re asking how I think it went?” Gideon asked in an attempt to translate Harrow’s face.

“Actually, on second thought, I don’t know that I want the details of your twisted imagination,” Harrow said, then she rolled her eyes, which made her seem more Fourth House than Ninth. “No, I _do_ want to know. Tell me. How do you think it went?” 

Gideon shoved the last bite of her bread into her mouth, chewed thoroughly to avoid interruption by hiccups, and began to speak.


	2. the bullshit

The Sixth cavalier followed the _click, click, click_ of knucklebones through the sagging halls of Canaan House. She held back, biding her time, waiting until eventually her quarry settled into the exact place the Sixth expected she would: her bone nest within the library. It was her home away from home, the one place that Harrowhark Nonagesimus knew her own cavalier would never find her because her cavalier had no idea where the library was located in this stupid maze of a crumbling House. 

Harrow, generally exceedingly paranoid and very wary, did not hear the silent Sixth approach. Harrow’s nose was shoved into one of many books too boring or unimportant for Teacher--or whoever it was that did the hiding in this place--to bother locking up before they all arrived. Who the hell knew what Harrow might be trying to find in there... maybe the best way to dispose of a body stuffed full of rotting lemons? Seemed suspicious.

“You’re arrested,” Camilla the Sixth announced, “for the murder of Protesilaus the Seventh.” She said it with all the authority of a Cohort Captain and all the know-it-all bravado of a Sixth House Warden. 

Books and bones clattered to the floor around Harrow as she jumped to her feet at the surprise intrusion. 

“Like hell I am,” Harrowhark sniped from within her trademarked black robes and with her trademarked sneer. The Lady of the Ninth House could be a downright nasty little goblin when she put her mind to it, and her mind was _to it_. 

Harrow wasted no time diving right in with her own special brand of nastiness. She opened her palms wide and out spewed hundreds of bone chips that rolled across the floor, a rattling racket of knuckles and broken phalanges. Within seconds the bits of bone were vibrating, bouncing against the floor, expanding. They grew skeletal legs and skeletal arms and by the time they grew skeletal heads they were already swarming toward Camilla the Sixth.

“Impressive,” Camilla noted evenly. She nodded with appreciation at the near instant formation of the Ninth’s army.

It was true. Harrow could be as impressive as the Emperor Undying Himself with just the smallest bit of bone. 

It wouldn’t matter. 

The Sixth was nothing if not prepared and Camilla was probably the most prepared Sixth ever to prepare. Camilla brought like seventeen different weapons to the First, that’s how prepared she was. Upon seeing her healthy stash of steel, some cavaliers were insanely jealous. Some cavaliers were limited by their necromancers to just one flimsy rapier and a couple shards of glass stuck through an old glove. 

Camilla did not bother with the pretense of a flimsy rapier this time. The necromancer from the Ninth was far too skilled for that. 

It still wouldn’t matter. Camilla reached behind her and--

Get a glimpse of these two short blades, bitch! Ya ha! 

Camilla drew both blades at once, smooth, _sexy_. And she was _fast_. She made quick work of Harrowhark’s skeleton army, bone smashing against fist and foot and steel. Camilla kept her breathing shallow, careful not to take in too much of the cloud of bone dust that quickly enveloped her. She didn’t want to think what a murderous Ninth necromancer might do with an opponent whose lungs were full of bone bits.

Harrow stood back and watched. Harrow, you see, was also the sort of person to spend an exorbitant amount of time in preparation. She was ready for this. The first round of skeletons was always expendable, always a test. Harrow spent years holed up on the Ninth raising skeletons and having her cavalier--née Ninth House serf and servant, Ninth House punching bag--challenge her stamina, her endurance, and her cunning. By the time she arrived at Canaan House, Harrowhark had raised a myriad skeletons and delighted in watching them fall under the capable hands of the Ninth’s most impressive swordswoman.

“That’s it?” Camilla asked. She spread her arms wide, one long knife held in each. She tossed the one in her right hand and it spun in the air. The hilt landed back in her palm, perfect and precise. 

Big sharp knives, it turned out, could be almost as cool as swords. 

“That’s all the Ninth has to offer?”

“Hardly.” 

Harrow raised the second wave, twice the number of bone soldiers as her first. She watched with satisfaction, with thick rivulets of blood dripping from her ears, as Camilla struggled with the sheer number of Harrow’s skeletons. 

Camilla was not deterred. She punched her knives through ribs, bashed the hilts against skulls, kicked out coxal bones. And when she’d dispatched enough of them, when she’d created an opening between herself and Harrow, she made her move.

Camilla threw her knife and it whizzed past Harrow’s shoulder with a whistle and a shiek. Harrow tried to step aside, to find cover before the other knife was released, but found that she’d been pinned. The knife caught her robe, fastened the fabric to the (real wood!) bookshelf behind her. 

Harrow froze, hesitated. She was loathe to remove her robe. For one thing, it was chocka with bones. Second, nothing would ever make Harrowhark Nonagesimus seem _tall_ , but her robes did make her seem at least a little intimidating, a little imposing. The black vestments of the Ninth filled her out, made her seem at least twice as robust as she actually was. Without her robes and her veils, without her facepaint, Harrow wasn’t scary at all. She was pointy, sure, hateful, but also kind of _cute_. It was unsettling in an entirely different way, in a way that Harrow had never sought to exploit.

That second of hesitation was all it took.

One moment of hesitation and Camilla the Sixth was across the room, her forearm pressed to Harrow’s chest, pushing her back against the bookshelves. The shelves shook, raining dust and books down around them. Harrow’s skeletons pulled at Camilla’s arms, at her clothes, but Harrow was distracted by the cavalier’s proximity, by the body pressed flush against hers, by the heat radiating from her opponent.

“Oh,” Harrow said, “Oh,” super breathy like she’d been taking lessons from Princess Corona. Later she’d probably try to shrug it all off. It was the exertion, maybe it was the adrenaline, but anyone watching would have recognized it for what it was. Harrow had the hots for the competent cavalier of her arch rival. 

It was no wonder. I mean, look at those _knives_.

Or was it the knives? Maybe it wasn’t really about the Sixth cavalier at all. Maybe Harrow’s head was somewhere else entirely during that moment against the stacks. 

Camilla smiled at her upper hand. Harrow had never seen Camilla smile, and when it happened, she found she could barely contain herself. Camilla needed to learn to cavalier less thoroughly, less impressively, or perhaps just somewhere else all together. This was irresistible for Harrow, who not-so-secretly had a thing for women who knew how to handle their weapons. 

“Surrender,” Camilla ordered, her voice a low rasp.

Harrow did surrender, in a way.

She kissed Camilla, mashed her mouth hard against Camilla’s lips. 

It was her very first kiss. She’d once kissed this boy back on the Ninth--Ortus, they called him--but she’d quickly decided that that couldn’t possibly count. Kissing Ortus was like kissing no one--even on the Ninth there were better options--so she pretended that never happened, reset herself back to factory settings, and never thought of it again.

She kissed Camilla, fueled by all her secret yearnings. She kissed Camilla with everything she had. 

Behind the Sixth, Harrow’s skeletons collapsed, breaking down into little piles of bone that held for a moment and then disintegrated into dust. 

Camilla kissed Harrow back good and thorough. When she broke the kiss and pulled back, Harrow sagged beneath her hands. Camilla tightened her grip, stopped Harrow from sliding down the floor, her mind blown by this kiss. Camilla regarded Harrow down the length of her nose.

“You have a thing for cavaliers,” she noted.

“Fuck you,” Harrow returned, not so far gone that she couldn’t bite back. She focused on the rage that rose within her at Camilla’s insinuation, aggressively imagined punching Camilla in the face. She didn’t do it. Instead she grabbed Camilla’s chin in her hand, pulled her back in and kissed her again.

A brief but steamy makeout session later, Camilla dislodged her knife from the bookshelf and fell back to lean against a table littered with forgotten tomes. Through sheer force of will, Harrow stayed on her feet, did not collapse like her army of bone soldiers.

“Why did you do it?” Camilla asked, more breathless now than she had been during the battle. 

“Kiss you?” Harrow asked, struck dumb by everything that had transpired.

Camilla shook her head. “Why him?”

“He pointed a sword at my cavalier,” Harrow sniffed. Her voice sounded brittle, dead, but her eyes were alive, burning bright in her skull.

“Why not let the Eighth deal with him?” Camilla asked. “The time and place were set.”

“His necromancer is a slimy seductress.”

“She’s dying.”

“She could die less sexily,” Harrow snapped. “She could die _somewhere else_. It’s all irresistible to some people--to people who have necromancers unwilling to resort to _dying_ sexily for attention.” 

“Huh,” Camilla said, because that was a whole lot of crazy jealous packed into a very small person. “Seems like you’ve thought a lot about this.”

“Kiss me again,” Harrow said. “We’ll show her.” Harrowhark Nonagesimus was incapable of asking; demands were her default. 

Camilla considered Harrow’s command. Eventually she shrugged, leaned in, and kissed Harrow again. Harrow’s sharp little fingers twisted in the Sixth’s cloak, super invested in this moment. While Harrow thought about climbing onto the table, while she gripped and kissed, Camilla’s hand slid into her pocket, pulled out something she’d stowed away for precisely this moment.

When the handcuff snapped around Harrow’s wrist, Harrow pulled back, startled. She glared at her wrist, then at Camilla, then back at her wrist. She rolled her eyes and groaned at the betrayal.

“Drat,” Harrow muttered. 

“You submit?” Camilla snapped the other cuff around her own wrist. 

“Fine,” Harrow sighed. “I submit myself to the Sixth. I submit myself to Sex”--here she paused for dramatic effect, eyebrows raised--”tus. I submit myself to the judgement of my cavalier. I can only hope that Gideon Nav will show me more kindness than I’ve ever afforded her.” 

And there you have it. That was how it happened. 

Knives, skeletons, adrenaline, fighting and kissing, kissing and fighting, and then, finally, handcuffed. That was how the Sixth defeated the fearsome Reverend Daughter of Drearburh.


	3. the cavalier's cot

Harrow was silent on the other end of the sofa, her toes pressed tight against Gideon’s leg. She’d maintained impressive composure throughout Gideon’s version of the events that transpired while Gideon confessed her sins to Palamedes on an old mattress in the Sixth Quarters. She did not interject, not even during the best bits, the bits carefully and lovingly designed to get an indignant rise out of the necromancer. Her only tells were the varied pressure of her feet against Gideon’s leg, the way she bit the inside of her cheek, and the fluctuating redness of her face. She went through every possible shade of red, all extremely visible without the cover of Ninth paint. It still amazed Gideon that Harrow had that much blood hiding in her, considering how often she expelled it. 

Harrow had abandoned her nibbled half of the apple, the browning core resting on the windowsill beside the sofa. She’d abandoned the hunk of bread, having pulled all the softest bits out of the center. She left only the hard shell of crust behind. 

“Well?” Gideon asked. She couldn’t take the silence any longer. 

Harrow’s teeth released her cheek and her face smoothed out, but she remained flushed. Gideon wondered if she forgot that she wasn’t wearing the paint. It wouldn’t have mattered given the present company. Gideon knew Harrow well enough to know her changes of expression even beneath a thick layer of skull paint.

“You are a terrible storyteller.” Harrow announcer, flatly, carefully. 

Relieved, Gideon relaxed against the sofa, unflexed her tense legs and sank into the sagging cushions. Gideon shrugged. 

“Yeah, well, I didn’t spend my whole life speechifying in bone church, did I? I’m unpracticed.”

Harrow pressed her lips into a tight line, but it didn’t work. Her mouth still betrayed her and she smiled. Her cheeks were so tight that it looked painful. “Terrible,” Harrow repeated.

“You’re smiling though, so am I really that bad?” 

Harrow turned away in a belated attempt to hide the fact that Gideon was entirely correct.

“You’re a worse storyteller than Sister Cadavensus. (“Wait, wasn’t she the nun with the spit that collected all sticky in the corner of her mouth while she spoke?” Gideon interjected. She always sounded so _moist_.) You’re worse than my great-aunt Lachrimorta when she tries to recite text from memory that she hasn’t been able to read in eighteen years. You’re worse than Ortus Nigenad when he tries not to snivel and drip while reciting the pathetic excuses his mother concocts so she can make his life less interesting. You’re-- _Rotting lemons_?” Harrow directed all of this to a spot of mold on the wall across the room to their left.

Gideon was surprised that was the first thing--other than Gideon’s storytelling skills--that Harrow chose to comment on. She was also surprised that Harrow spoke of Ortus in present tense. Did she not know? Gideon would have to chew on that a while.

“His muscles were very bulbous,” Gideon pointed out. “It was weird.”

“I can’t say I noticed,” Harrow said. She looked back toward Gideon. Her mouth was under control, but her cheeks were still flushed and her toes poked hard into Gideon’s leg. “Even your imagination is defective. I do not recall showing up at the Sixth’s rooms with a bloody face or a torn robe. I suppose the next scene in your story would have been Camilla the Sixth escorting me to the nearest bathroom so that I could wipe the blood away, reapply my paint, and repair the hole in the shoulder of my robe? All while handcuffed together?”

Leave it to Harrow to fixate on the inconsequential details while ignoring the beating heart of things. 

“You’re trying to get back at me for calling out your flirting with the Seventh,” Harrow said then. Finally. “I’ve already admitted to jealousy.” 

“No, I’m calling out your hard-on for the Sixth.”

Harrow choked a little at that--perhaps a suppressed laugh--and her hand flew to her mouth as though in an attempt to hold it in, to catch it and shove it back down her throat. Gideon was glad she caught it before it was released. She could barely handle Harrow smiling. Harrow laughing might actually kill her.

“My hard-on for Camilla the Sixth?” Harrow repeated through the gaps in her fingers. Despite the rest of it, she still managed to twist her voice toward that same haughty tone that had featured prominently in Gideon’s nightmares over the years. “The thing is, Griddle, if you just fabricate something, it doesn’t have quite the same sting as it would if it were based in fact.”

Gideon pretended to consider Harrow’s point. “The facts are there. The cavalier is proxy,” she amended, and then in case that wasn’t clear enough: “for Sex...tus.”

Harrow looked like she was literally biting her tongue. Her eyes were bright and shiny. She looked away from Gideon again and her chest rose and fell as she took a few big deep breaths.

“You know,” Harrow said after a moment. Her voice sounded strange and strained. “If the cavalier in your story was intended to be a proxy for Palamedes Sextus, she was egregiously mischaracterized.”

“Huh,” Gideon said, pretended to consider this point as well. “Was she?”

“She was. In fact, it all read as a proxy for something else entirely.”

“I don’t know--” Gideon squinted, tipped her head back and forth. “--I mean, maybe?”

Harrow’s face lit up like Canaan House at night, bright and flickering, might possibly short out or start on fire at any moment. ‘I mean, maybe?’ was apparently the exact right thing to say and Gideon’s chest swelled a little in response. It was too much, too close to that moment at the edge of the pool. Despite the teasing, despite blatantly talking for a good twenty minutes about Harrow kissing a proxy, despite Harrow’s generally positive reaction, and despite Harrow’s flushed cheeks and bright eyes...Gideon changed course for the third time that night and promptly ruined it.

“It’s her knives. Wow, right? Who wouldn’t be impressed by that. Hot.” She pulled at the collar of her shirt to demonstrate how hot she was over it, over Camilla the Sixth.

Harrow kicked her. Hard. Gideon let Harrow kick her legs off the sofa while she laughed, didn’t bother trying to suppress it.

“This is ridiculous,” Harrow concluded. “You’re just trying to fluster me.”

“It’s working,” Gideon noted, couldn’t seem to help it. She had, perhaps, given herself away just a little. At any other moment, in any other time and place with Harrowhark Nonagesimus, that would have been horrifying, but something about this night and this moment made the confession… almost comfortable? Not comfortable enough to take it any further, but almost. 

Harrow looked past Gideon into the Ninth’s quarters, toward the bedroom, toward Gideon’s nest of blankets. 

“We should sleep,” she said, a hint of resignation in her voice. They were words that Gideon had been both longing for--seriously, when had she last slept?--and dreading. “We have to be up with Dominicus.” 

Those words she was definitely dreading.

They were slow to get up from the sofa, slow to clean up the remains of their makeshift dinner, slow to retreat to their respective beds. Harrow stood in the doorway for a long time, her arms folded tight across her chest. She watched as Gideon arranged herself within her pile of dusty blankets, as she punched her pillow into sufficient shape to support her neck. 

“Everything okay?” Gideon asked, once she was settled. Harrow still hadn’t moved. Was she waiting for Gideon to invite her over for a cuddle? 

“Goodnight, Griddle,” Harrow said. It was the first time the nickname actually sounded _nice_. “I’ll see you in seven hours.”

“Eight,” Gideon countered. 

“Seven and a half.” Harrow didn’t wait for Gideon’s response. She turned and disappeared into the bedroom.

“Harrow,” Gideon groaned. She flopped onto her back, but when Harrow didn’t respond, Gideon twisted again to look toward the bedroom. Harrow’s bedside lamp was still on, the door open. From Gideon’s spot on the floor she could see a corner of the big draped bed and the whole of the cavalier’s cot. The cot gave her pause.

The evening had changed everything. 

One flesh. 

One end. 

One bed, one...cavalier’s cot.

Gideon replayed recent events for the zillionth time, her mind racing with Harrow and their fight in the corridor, with Harrow’s mouth twisting at the the vehemence with which Gideon had said, “I hate you, I never stopped hating you, I will always hate you”, with Harrow’s hand trembling in hers on the edge of the pool and with the way her heart seemed to stop when Gideon leaned in to kiss her.

The lamp in the bedroom snapped off. The only lights now were those glowing outside their windows, on the landing dock set above the Ninth quarters.

Right, then. Gideon stood. She gathered her blankets and her pillow. 

“Nav?” Harrow asked when Gideon entered the bedroom, her ball of blankets held tight in her arms. Harrow sat up, her furrowed brow just barely visible in the gloom.

“One flesh, one end, right?” Gideon asked. She tossed her pillow down onto the cot. Her blankets quickly followed.

“One flesh, one end,” Harrow returned. She said it low, a murmur, but it didn’t hide what she’d surely hoped to hide, a tremor of emotion that rippled through her voice. She cleared her throat, made a point of yawning loudly. When she spoke again, it was with regained composure and a steady voice: “Go to sleep. We’re up in seven hours and fifteen minutes.”

What did a future look like without the grounding hatred of Harrow burning in Gideon’s gut, fueling her at every moment of every day? What did their world become if Harrow had to admit that she did think about Gideon, in fact, all the time and every day, and not all of those thoughts were directly related to Gideon’s demise? 

Gideon’s body gave a treacherous little thrill at the thought and she shivered and rubbed at her arms. It was the last little push she needed to get herself onto the cot, to hide everything safely beneath a thick layer of blanket.

The cavalier’s cot creaked, screamed in protest at her presence. It was narrow, hard, and not nearly as comfortable as the nest she’d created in the other room. She tried not to think about that. She was Harrow’s cavalier. She would sleep at the foot of Harrow’s bed in a rickety cot that made her bed back in her cell on the Ninth seem lush by comparison. She was nothing now if not committed to Harrowhark Nonagesimus.

Harrow was quiet in the bed, perhaps already asleep, and Gideon found herself thinking of Ortus, of all people. Of all people at a time like this. 

She tried to imagine what might have happened if Ortus hadn’t left, if he’d stood by his oath and come to Canaan House at Harrow’s side. He would have slept in this (still somewhat) humiliating cot at the foot of Harrow’s bed from day one. Without his mother directing him, he would have been Harrow’s loyal lapdog, at least until Harrow asked him to do anything even remotely dangerous.

Would Harrow have ditched him that first night and every night after, disappearing for weeks? Would Ortus have been sworn to a vow of silence (the answer to that, Gideon felt certain, was a definite yes, even despite Ortus’s supposed years of training). Would Harrow have confided in Ortus sooner? At all? Gideon tried to imagine Ortus in the chamber with that bone construct, Harrow in Ortus’s head, directing his sword. She tried to imagine Harrow siphoning Ortus and making it across that room in one piece.

Gideon had trained with Ortus many times over the years. That bone construct would have killed him in no time. Siphoning was out of the question. In fact, it was hard to imagine any of it with any clarity, with any truth. Harrow had always hated Gideon, sure, but Ortus--they’d always chosen to suffer each others’ company over spending any time with Ortus if they could help it. 

Gideon was tempted to ask Harrow, suddenly, if she planned it all out, if she guided Glaurica and Ortus to Gideon’s shuttle on purpose, if she seeded the idea in their heads. How else could they know that Gideon was planning to escape the Ninth that morning? How could they know that a shuttle was waiting for her on the landing field?

It didn’t make sense. Harrow had no reason to kill Ortus and Glaurica, but Gideon--

Gideon shifted onto her side, her face toward the bed. She could just make out the lump of Harrow beneath the blankets. It wasn’t much of a lump; Harrow was _very_ small.

It was one thing to be here as Harrow’s unwilling cavalier, to follow her inane rules until Harrow got her spot in the Lyctor lineup and Gideon was released from the Ninth once and for all. They were past that now. This was another thing entirely. A whole other fucked-up-several-people-dead-already (no, Nav, don’t think about Jeannemary) thing. This was a weird twisted up feeling every time Gideon thought of Harrow out there without her cavalier at her side, Harrow meeting the same end as the Fifth or the Fourth. It was the fact that her heart didn’t untwist even when she thought about smaller things, about the shape of Harrow beneath the blankets of the bed, about the way that Harrow had _smiled_ with her. That had rarely happened even when they were very small children. Harrow was sour and mean from birth.

Gideon tried to imagine what it must have been like, young Harrow and less young Ortus, pledging themselves to each other. She imagined them kneeling before Harrow’s parents, facing each other, holding hands. One flesh, one end. Was that how it went? Like a twisted wedding ceremony?

She shuddered at the thought. It left her feeling a little nauseous, honestly, and more than a little panicked. It was a long moment before she found the word for that churning unease. She was _jealous_. Of _Ortus_. Ortus, who died in her place. Ortus, who surely would have died either way. 

In the bed, Harrow sighed heavily, like maybe she was lying there reading Gideon’s thoughts, like maybe she was already working on rebuilding her walls. 

“Harrow?” 

Silence from the bed, and then after a long moment: “Yes?”

Gideon hadn’t planned what she wanted to say next. Ortus on his knees, rapier in hand, Harrow in the pool, Dulcinea in her sick bed, Jeannemary--

What she really wanted to say, but couldn’t: “I don’t hate you.” 

She imagined whispering it in the warm dark of the room.

“I don’t hate you either,” Imaginary Harrow returned. “I think about you often.” 

Gideon didn’t say it.

Instead, her mind still stuck on Ortus, her gut still turning a little with silly irrational jealousy, she said, “Did you try to kill me, back on the Ninth?”


	4. the truth

The truth was, perhaps, an easy thing when you were Gideon Nav. The only secrets Gideon had were the ones that the Ninth required her to keep.

It wasn’t as straightforward for the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, the House of Heretical Secrets. It wasn’t as straightforward when you were born out of secrets, when you inherited a laundry list of secrets, when you spent seventeen years searching out even more, collecting them, occasionally dusting them off and turning them over in your hands. Harrow never needed real live friends; she had an entire collection of secrets to keep her company, secrets just like her. 

The truth was that the last children of the Ninth were born to be consumed, fed to Harrowhark, dropped into her starving mouth one by one until she emerged, stronger than any that came before her. Gideon was not an exception. She was chained to the Ninth and kept for food, for power. But Gideon wasn’t of the Ninth. 

Maybe that’s how she did it. Maybe that was how she managed to escape being ground to dust in Harrow’s teeth. Harrow could not escape the weight of the Ninth’s secrets, could not escape her birth. Gideon did nothing except try to escape. 

**

The truth: 

Gideon Nav must have spent months preparing for that last escape attempt. It was honestly well done. 

The night the invitation arrived from the First, the letter that mentioned another scheduled shuttle, Harrow actually contemplated letting Gideon leave. 

It would make everything easier. It would remove any possibility of undeserved redemption for Harrowhark Nonagesimus in the eyes of Gideon Nav; Griddle would leave Harrow with a burning hatred in her heart and her eyes those unyielding disks of shining gold. There was the possibility that Gideon might snitch what she knew of the Ninth’s secrets, eventually, but if Harrow was already on the First, already on her way to becoming a Lyctor, would that really matter anymore?

The following morning Harrow had Ortus the Ninth stand across from her in Aiglamene’s training hall with a bag of bones, his rapier and his buckler. 

“Start throwing,” Harrow ordered, and Ortus whined a few short syllables before he reached into the bag and pulled out a vertebrae. 

Harrow, stupidly, thought that meant that there was hope.

Ortus tossed the vertebrae in Harrow’s general direction and fumbled with his rapier. He then stood there, shocked, when the bone started to expand, sprouting legs and twisting itself midair so that when it landed a fully formed skeleton and began to run, it was running back at Harrow’s cavalier.

Ortus poked it ineffectively with his sword. The skeleton punched him square in the face and down he went, rapier thrown aside and hands clutching at his bleeding nose. Just to prove her point, Harrow raised several arms that sprouted from the bones in his back to keep him pinned to the ground, flailing.

Harrow could not trust Ortus Nigenad to tie his own shoes. How could she trust him to act as her cavalier outside the relative safety of their locked and shuttered House?

It was, of course, her fault. She’d never pushed Ortus, never relied on him to do anything except carry bones for her. If there was anything really worth doing, anything that required a modicum of physical exertion, Harrow always had and always would go straight to Gideon Nav. Sometimes she made Ortus carry her bones to the general vicinity of Gideon Nav, ordered him to drop the bag, and then dismissed him immediately. 

When she’d done this exercise with Gideon months ago, Harrow had been the one throwing bone, hurtling chunks at Gideon as hard as she could (admittedly not much harder than Ortus) and transforming them mid-air so that the skeletons hit the ground at full speed. Gideon just barely had time to get her sword in the air, but she did, and the constructs shattered, bone raining down. It was thrilling! Harrow threw harder, transformed faster, and by the time they were done Gideon was panting and falling to her knees and Harrow was coughing on her own blood and trying not to give Gideon the satisfaction of seeing her laugh.

There was no comparison to be made. There was only one logical choice.

Harrow had one week to get rid of Ortus and dismantle Gideon’s plan for escape. 

**

The truth:

She planned the entire thing. She planned the exact time of Crux’s arrival on the landing field. She planned Aiglamene’s. She spent a week seeding the idea of escape in the mind of Sister Glaurica, informed her of the shuttle, allowed her the room to make her way to the landing field.

She did not kill them, or at least, she did not intend to kill them. 

She’d never had a good handle on Crux. She let him get this far only because he was one of her father’s favorites, because he was as Ninth as the Tomb, as the rock and bone of Drearburh. She let him get this far because the Ninth could not afford to be picky with personnel. She let him get this far because, even without her asking, he did everything in his power to keep Gideon Nav at her side.

**

The truth: 

The Sixth cavalier found Harrow in the facility searching for the missing body of Protesilaus the Seventh. Canaan House had locked doors in the upper floors associated with Lyctor laboratories. Everyone taking part in the trials knew that by now. The locked doors within the facility were the bigger mystery. When she pressed Teacher about them, the response was cryptic, chock full of death and ghosts and revenge. That just made the matter more pressing. She had to know the secrets the First kept locked down here.

Harrow was crouched on the floor grates trying to peer through the gap at the base of a heavy steel door when she heard Camilla’s approach. She had just enough time to stand and smooth her robe. 

“Your cavalier thinks you murdered the Seventh,” Camilla said the moment she found Harrowhark. 

Harrow paused and then sighed and looked at the ceiling. She should have put wards on the wardrobe. She’d shoved the Seventh’s head into that box in such a rush, still jumpy from what had transpired below, sure that Gideon would return at any moment and catch her in the act. 

Camilla, for her part, did not look particularly concerned, and definitely did not seem afraid that a Ninth necromancer capable of taking out the hulking Seventh cavalier might try to harm her next. 

“You don’t think so?” Harrow guessed. 

Camilla shrugged. “I don’t know. Did you?”

“No.” She’d gone about this all wrong. She should have taken the time to determine, once and for all, whether she could trust Gideon Nav. She should have determined that before anything else, but there’d been no _time_. Now she had a cavalier who’d discovered a head in her necromancer’s wardrobe, a cavalier who didn’t trust her necromancer enough to confront her about it directly. Either that or a cavalier who didn’t trust herself enough to trust what she might do if it turned out her necromancer had murdered the cavalier of her inappropriate crush. Ugh. Griddle.

Camilla pulled the handcuffs from her robe. “Can you put these on?”

“Why?” Harrow asked, immediately suspicious. “Where’s my cavalier?” 

“She’s with the Warden.”

“I’ll come with you then,” Harrow said, impatient to be reunited with Gideon. If the Sixth had ill intentions toward the Ninth, they’d already had numerous opportunities to dispose of Gideon, but that didn’t leave Harrow any less comforted by the thought of Gideon alone with Palamedes Sextus. “You don’t need handcuffs. Lead the way.”

She didn’t wait for Camilla to start leading. They were, presumably, within the Sixth’s quarters. Harrow knew how to get there. She started walking. Camilla caught up to her, still holding the handcuffs toward Harrow. 

“It’ll look a lot more impressive if I bring you back in these,” Camilla noted.

“Impressive to who?” Harrow asked. “Surely Sextus is already impressed with his cavalier. You seem very close, very in tune.” How had Gideon put it? Ah yes. He was a ‘perfect moron’ over her.

“I’ll let you hold the key,” Camilla offered instead of answering Harrow’s question. Perhaps it was Gideon she was trying to impress. Gideon probably _would_ be impressed to see Camilla walk in with Harrow in handcuffs, particularly considering that Gideon was now convinced that her necromancer was a murderer and had betrayed her to the Sixth House, of all people. 

Though, to be fair, based on the evidence Harrow had collected thus far, the Sixth House probably was the least terrible of the living options. 

Harrow paused. “I hold the key and you’re only cuffing one of my wrists. Your wrist in the other cuff.”

Camilla considered this for a long moment. It was almost the exact opposite of what the Sixth cavalier had intended. This gave Harrow the upper hand. She’d have Camilla the Sixth bound and she’d be in possession of the key. Did Camilla want to impress whoever it was she was trying to impress enough to relinquish control of the circumstances to Harrow, a recently accused murderer?

Finally Camilla shrugged. She secured the handcuffs around one of her wrists and handed Harrow the key. Harrow took it, slipped it into the pocket on the right side of her robe, and then snapped the handcuff onto her left wrist.

“If this was a delay designed to give Sextus adequate time to damage my cavalier, I’ll kill you both,” Harrow warned.

“Have you ever considered confiding in her?” Camilla asked. 

Harrow considered raising a construct and directing it to punch Camilla the Sixth in the face. 

She took a deep breath and commenced her retort: “Have you ever considered that for all everyone talks of Ninth cavs being necro suitcases, the only House here that uses their cavalier as a pack mule is the Sixth? Have you ever considered that the Ninth does not need a cavalier that organizes her underwear and reminds her to eat. The Warden might be content with a loyal suitcase, a book bag, a lap dog trained to play fetch. Despite the rumors, the Ninth House requires more.”

“Are you finished?” Camilla asked. She seemed to have an endless supply of patience, perhaps she was used to necromancers sounding off. “I’m just saying. She’s on your side. She’s got your back, or she would, if she knew which way to swing her sword.”

Harrow’s heart hammered in her chest despite the fact that the words spoken were so clearly off the mark. “Not that it’s any of your concern, but I would point out that she just rushed to you with an accusation of murder.”

This didn’t seem to change Camilla’s opinion, which just made Harrow’s heart hammer faster.

“Does Sextus think I murdered the Seventh?” Harrow asked, both because she genuinely wanted to know and because Gideon’s safety might depend on the answer.

“The Warden thinks Protesilaus the Seventh arrived already dead,” Camilla said.

“He’s right,” Harrow confirmed.

Camilla merely nodded.

They walked back to the Sixth’s rooms in silence, bound wrist to wrist. When they reached the ladder out of the facility, they paused and assessed the situation. Camilla waved a hand for Harrow to go first. Harrow was not a cavalier, nor was she an idiot. She was not about to be pulled off the ladder by the Sixth, to crash to the facility floor like the Fifth. She pulled the key from her pocket, unlocked her wrist, and climbed up the ladder. In the atrium, she held out her hand and Camilla snapped the cuff back in place.

Harrow itched to interrogate the Sixth, to extract everything the Sixth knew of her cavalier and her cavalier’s intentions, to gorge herself with all the answers she could not bring herself to ask Gideon herself. Let the Sixth assure her, let her talk of Gideon’s loyalty as though she knew Gideon’s heart better than Harrow, as though she knew anything at all. 

Harrow could no longer afford not to trust Gideon in this place. This moment, bound to the Sixth cavalier, proved that once and for all. It was long past time to let Gideon in, to expose her secrets--at least some of them--even if that meant driving Gideon away for good.

**

The truth:

Maybe Gideon was born a secret too. 

**

The truth:

Harrow saw how Gideon was with Dulcinea Septimus, with Coronabeth Tridentarius, with the Sixth, and she absolutely _seethed_ with jealousy, had since Dulcinea first swooned down onto the landing dock. 

How could she have known how easy it could be to let Gideon in? 

Harrowhark had never felt so seen, so _wanted_ , or so content as she did in those perfect hours after her confession in the pool. Gideon did not leave. She did not curse Harrow’s name or run screaming to the Sixth. She did not strike Harrow down.

Gideon pulled her closer than she’d ever dared to hope, and for the first time in her life, Harrow did not feel alone. 

**

The truth:

Harrow did not hate Gideon Nav. 

She thought about her all the time.


End file.
